


More than That

by Erufaeleth



Series: Healing scars [1]
Category: Deus Ex (Video Games), Deus Ex: Human Revolution
Genre: Angst, Body Image, Gen, Non-Consensual Body Modification, Transhumanism, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-23
Updated: 2021-02-23
Packaged: 2021-03-13 21:00:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29657235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Erufaeleth/pseuds/Erufaeleth
Summary: Adam Jensen has yet to come to terms with what has been done to him... but there is more to the change than meets the eye.
Series: Healing scars [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2179359
Comments: 4
Kudos: 6





	More than That

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first published fanfic ever, so... please be gentle ;)
> 
> I do not own Deus Ex or any of the characters that appear there. All rights belong to their respective owners.

They told me I would get used to it. They lied.  
  
I remember every one of their damn adverts now. Every single one, bearing the picture of some perfect model. Yeah, perfect - maybe in their world. Their world built of chrome and carbon and some nano-ceramic shit. A world that is no longer human.  
  
All the brochures - I had to read them, it was a part of my job to know the company after all - had the nasty bits, too… but not quite in the straightforward way. Sure, they told you you would need rehab. Sure, they even mentioned the emotional trauma, the feeling that it was no longer your body… It was somewhere near the end of each brochure, of course, but even Sarif wasn’t enough of a hypocrite to deny it. I wasn’t the first to get those without my consent, I know, and the people who were before me reacted strongly to what happened to them. They had the right. I had the right. But… at least for them, the decision was made by someone they knew. Someone they trusted. Not by some fucking smooth-talking CEO.  
  
Of course, he had the right to do it. I gave it to him myself. Yeah, I was one of those few who actually read the fine print. Comes from being a cop for so long, I guess. So, I knew what I signed up for when I took the job at Sarif Industries. Not that I ever thought it would come up to this. It was true, what I told people sometimes when they asked about my augments. I never asked for this.  
  
I clench my black-and-gold fist. Trademark colours of SI. I snort. They couldn’t even leave this… they had to make me some stupid fucking advert, singing the perfection of their machinery. Maybe they hoped that someone would se mee and go all “hey, I want that stuff”. I wish I could get to them, if they did. If someone was ever that stupid. I wish I could just walk up to them, press them to a wall, their all-too-human skin so soft and breakable under my mechanic hands. I wish I could tell them what I knew. All about the pain and… about the things that were worse than pain. About waking up and thinking these were some spare parts lying close to me, that this wasn’t… that this wasn’t me. About laying awake for hours, staring at the ceiling, wishing I didn’t sign that damn contract. Sarif needed me, I knew that now. I could’ve asked for something better. I could’ve crossed out the fine print. But I didn’t… and it looks like I will hate myself for it for the rest of my augmented life.  
  
I stand up, set the whiskey glass on the table - carefully; even after all the time, I am still afraid I will break things - and go to the bathroom. I stand in front of the large mirror, still broken after my last outburst. They had replaced it two times. For the third… it looks like they decided to just wait it out. I retract my shades. They go with a whizz, hiding inside my skull. I am training… but it is unlike any routine I ever went through. Unlike my first boyish stuff, unlike the force, even SWAT. I train - because one day, I hope to look at myself in the mirror without wanting to scream. This far, I have managed not to punch the mirror again. It is something. Baby steps, Jensen. Baby steps.  
  
I decide to go a little bit further. I take off my shirt, examining this strange body-like thing I was left with. I move the metal fingers - my fingers, I have to remind myself - across the smooth metal of my left arm, and then across the natural skin of my chest - or what was left of it. I can still feel the metal underneath it. “They had to make some modification to your chest area, Mr. Jensen”, said the nurse when I finally got her to talk to me about it. “Reinforce it so that it would support your arms.” Yeah. And for that reason I ended up with the Typhoon, too. Sure.  
  
To tell the truth, I am already beginning to adjust. It has been over three months already. The people I let close - Malik, mainly - know that it has been hard for me to accept this mutilated body as my own. They keep telling me that Sarif had his reasons. But I had mine, too. My lips twist into a mockery of a smile. Malik would never believe it… but I miss not just my body. I miss my scars.  
  
I touch my left wrist - all metal and cyber-skin and artificial muscle, and remember the little white line I had there. Just one inch, maybe one and a half, so think it was almost unnoticeable. But for me, it was a reminder of the first time I almost died. I was eight that day. I was fiddling with some stuff in the basement. I don’t even remember what it was. But I remember pain, blood spurting out of the wound, and Mother’s scream. She thought I was dying. I thought so, too. But the bleeding was stopped, and I survived. And I kept surviving, again and again, until it was all I knew, all that I had left. To survive - and to help others survive. My mission, which soon blended into one with “protect and serve”.  
  
I got many more scars since then. Neither of my jobs had been an uneventful one, after all. But now… they were all gone. Not just the ones on my arms and legs, obviously, but others, too. The one on my left side, when a bullet scraped me when I was still with SWAT. The one on my ribs from when some thug tried to knife me, and I had to show him the error of his ways. And many, many more, so many that I almost lost count. Almost. But now… now they are all gone, and I am a man with no past.


End file.
